Hello all,
I'm completely new to this whole thing and I have a really basic question about Neo4j 
I want to learn how to use Neo4j and I did a bit of research about the different possibilites.
But I have to say that I don't really understand the differences between Neo4j Desktop and Aura by just reading about it.
Aura sounds totally perfect - all features, no Installation, backups, including Management,...
And I really do'nt see the point in using the Desktop Version.
But the Desktop Version has to has some advantages I think...?
Can someone please explain me the advantages/ disadvantages of using the Desktop Version vs. Aura?
I would be really thankful about that
Kind regards
Lara
Hi @lara.maria.kaiser ! And welcome to the community!!
Aura is Neo4j's DBaaS (DataBase as a Service) for cloud deployments. Neo4j's engineers take care of updates, instance health tests and the overall maintenance of your Neo4j instance. This way you have only to worry about loading the data and consuming it in your own application (or us Neo4j Browser, Bloom to query the database). It is a paid product, of course, in which you subscribe to the service, you should check the pricing page to see if it adjusts for your usage.
Neo4j Desktop is sort of a database administrator, in which you can create projects and databases inside of each project. It works for local, remote or even AuraDB instances (although what you can do in each one differs). The main usage for Neo4j Desktop is to create a local development environment to try ideas in a project, being personal, academic or even professional.
So, each has its own characteristics that I wouldn't define as advantages or disadvantages, because their usage is different. If you stick to community edition and AuraDB Free, the only difference could be that AuraDB free has a limit in the number of nodes and relationships that you can store in the database, whereas Neo4j Desktop can store as many as your local or remote system can.
As a beginner I'd recommend to use Neo4j Desktop locally to test the technology and learn about it! There's also Neo4j Sandbox that let's you create a project with data already loaded. Maybe you have already been there, but there's a set of free courses that you can take in Graph Academy to learn more about Neo4j.
Also, the differences between Community and Enterprise editions are also important to know, you should also check them here.
I hope this helps to make the decision!
2 Likes
Thank you very much for your detailed answer - that will help me a lot!
1 Like